Isabel Healthcare Blog

As we head into the last month of the 2019, and for many of us the busiest month too, we can find ourselves getting more and more tired, as we try to balance work, the holidays, and visiting family and friends. What’s more, at this time of year, particularly in climates where the weather is getting colder, there are many more illnesses and colds going around, which can all contribute to us feeling a little less spring in our step. We’ve rounded up some of the common causes of tiredness and fatigue, varying from the more serious conditions to look out for, to the less serious such as simply not getting enough shut eye.

In the United Kingdom (UK), adults over 80 years are the fastest growing population.  Around a quarter of the population in the UK are over 60 years old, and by 2030, this figure will rise to a third of the population.  In the United States, in 2018 those age over 65 accounted for 52 million (16% of the total population) and projections currently estimate that by 2060 this will increase to 95 million (23% of the total population).

This month is Pulmonary Hypertension Awareness Month when charities launch campaigns to raise awareness about this progressive lung disease which is thought to affect around 1% of the global population (increasing to 10% for those aged over 65). As symptoms are non-specific, the disease is often misdiagnosed, which is why increasing awareness is so critical. While in most cases, no cure is currently available, early diagnosis can massively improve a patient’s outcome.

So, you’ve got a niggling health issue that won’t go away… but the GP can’t see you again for 3 weeks. Onto the internet to see if Dr Google can help. Sound familiar? If it does, you’re not alone.

November is Epilepsy Awareness Month in the US, so in this week’s post we’re going over the basics of this neurological condition that affects more people than you might think. 1 in 26 of us will experience epilepsy at some point in our life, and in the US alone around 150,000 people are diagnosed with epilepsy each year. There are many different types of epilepsy, different types of seizures, and different symptoms for these seizures.

There have been several announcements this week, both in the US and the UK, and also in Australia, on some new drugs that will become available for cystic fibrosis patients. Pharmaceutical company Vertex have reached deals in the UK and Australia for the double-combination drugs Orkambi and Symkevi, while in the US, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has approved a new 3-drug treatment marketed as Trikafta.

Everyone has experienced stomach pain at some point in their life. Often the cause is obvious, such as a stomach bug or too many sit ups at the gym, and the symptoms will disappear in a day or two. Sometimes, however, the cause of a stomach ache isn’t clear, and this can be quite unnerving. There are a few clues when assessing the cause of a stomach ache, and one of these clues is the location. If your stomach ache is in a particular area of the stomach, or abdomen, you can eliminate other causes and narrow down to the cause. One such type of stomach ache dictated by the area of the abdomen is called epigastric pain.

Take a look at the stats for Stomach Cancer, also known as Gastric Cancer, and you’ll realise it’s not an easy one to diagnose. Out of an estimated 28,000 cases in the US each year, nearly a third, 10,960, are expected to die. The figures in the UK are even worse with only 15% of patients expected to live beyond 10 years. The real clue lies in the fact that nearly a third of British patients first present with the illness in their emergency or A&E department, and given that the typical initial symptoms such as indigestion, wind or heartburn aren’t exactly emergency symptoms, this implies that most patients are experiencing a substantial and often fatal delay in getting a diagnosis. As stomach cancer symptoms are often easily mistaken for less serious conditions, it’s understandable that both patient and doctor won’t suspect a potentially fatal cancer as the cause. Which is why we’ve devoted this week’s blog to discussing the symptoms and when to seek advice, in the hopes we can help sufferers present much earlier to their doctor and consequently find a cure.

We all know that our lungs are a vital organ, necessary to keep us alive, and if we don’t have a medical career, we can probably remember some of the information we were taught at high school and that’s about it. Something to do with aioli? Or is that the garlic dip? The good news is that for our bodies to work, we don’t need to know what they’re doing, they are able to function by themselves. But what happens when we get a pain, a rash, or an ache that we’ve never had before, and our body is unable to work as well as it usually does? With something as vital as the lungs, this can be quite alarming, and we suddenly wish we’d paid more attention in biology class. Difficulty breathing and pains in our chest are definitely not symptoms to be ignored, and knowing what the symptoms mean, how to spot them, and what to do next is really important. You should always talk to your doctor if you have any new symptoms that don’t go away, but researching the symptom yourself with a credible symptom checker can really help you and your doctor to reach a diagnosis quicker. Here are the most common causes of problems in your lungs and their symptoms.

Around the globe, September is Suicide Prevention Month. National Suicide Prevention day was earlier in the month in the UK, whilst September 8th-14th was Suicide Prevention Week in the US.  Although the ways we talk about suicide and mental health have been improving in recent years, there is still a huge stigma attached to the subject, and talking about suicidal thoughts and feelings. Suicide is on the rise globally, with 800,000 people dying by suicide last year, so it’s more important than ever that we raise awareness, to try and stop so many people dying from suicide.